Posts Tagged ‘Peter Schmidt’

Peter Schmidt of the Chronicle of Higher Education bemoans the privilege of wealth which allows full-pay students with alumni or political connections to get into elite colleges without elite credentials. He cites research by the Educational Testing Service which claims 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at US top-tier colleges are “white teens who failed to meet their institutions’ minimum admission standards.” While I’m sympathetic to the egalitarian idealism Peter advocates… and amazed by the evidence he cites in the 2nd half of his article … I also suspect that the economics of college tuition discounting make it likely that a percentage of full-pay students are necessary to keep the wheels turning and the grants flowing for need-based “scholarships”.